So, I guess my question is : would you recommend the Spinpoints ?

I don't think I have a real "apples to apples" comparison because all of my recent WD experience was with single drives, and my Samsung drives are part of a RAID5 array. So obviously the performance of the RAID system has been a huge upgrade (mostly on read speed, but I think write speed is faster in my setup as well, possibly due to a switch from ext3 to jfs.) However, the quietest WD drive I've ever had is about 3 times as loud as the combined noise of all 4 of my Samsung drives. So in the noise category, it's no contest. IIRC, www.storagereview.com has good data on the Samsung drives and there you can compare the performance if you wish. As for reliability, hard for me to say, as it's only been three weeks.